Book Image

The Photographer's Guide to Adobe Lightroom

By : Marcin Lewandowski
Book Image

The Photographer's Guide to Adobe Lightroom

By: Marcin Lewandowski

Overview of this book

It takes talent to be a great photographer, but in the digital era, it also takes a level of technical proficiency. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic was designed as a one-stop solution for photographers to perfect their final products on a desktop-focused workflow, which includes local storage of your photos in files and folders on your computer. Knowing how to efficiently navigate through Lightroom means that you’ll be able to concentrate on being creative instead of wondering “what does this button do”. Complete with step-by-step explanations of essential concepts and practical examples, you will begin with importing photographs into Lightroom. You’ll focus on how to sort through, sequence, develop, and export ready files in various formats, or even design a book and create gallery-ready prints. Next, you will learn how to make informed decisions within Lightroom and how to approach your work depending on the set of photographs you are working on. This guide also illustrates real-life usage and workflow examples that are not just for aspiring professionals, but also for artists and amateurs who are still getting to grips with the technical side of photography. By the end of this book, you'll be confident in importing, editing, sorting, developing, and delivering your photos like a professional.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
1
Section 1: Importing Images into Lightroom and Exploring the Library Module's Structure and Tools
6
Section 2: Developing Photographs in Lightroom Classic
9
Section 3: Exploring the Export, Print, Book, and Slideshow Modules
14
Table of Keyboard Shortcuts

Opening Lightroom for the first time

When we start Lightroom for the first time, it asks us to either create a new catalog or locate an existing one. Whether you have put any thought into this decision or not, we will go through the whole process so that everyone understands the aftermath of this choice.

Figure 2.1 – The Select Catalog dialog

This catalog that Lightroom asks us to create is a database that will house references to all the photographs we will ever import into Lightroom in the future. Once we create our catalog, which will have the lrcat file extension, Lightroom will also create a few additional files with the same base name and added words – Sync, Previews, Smart Previews, and Helper. These files will hold information that helps us to keep Lightroom working as smoothly as possible.

This is how it looks on my computer.

Figure 2.2 – The catalog structure

Our first and last catalog

I use just...